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By Tom Westcott and Ashraf Abdul Wahab.
Tripoli, 23 March 2014:
The Morning Glory is now moored off the coast of Tripoli after . . .[restrict]sailing from Zawia last night to deliver the three Libyans and 21 crew on board into the custody of the Attorney General in the capital.
Tripoli was the vessel’s second port of call, after it first went to Zawia, once the Navy took control of the vessel from the US military in international waters yesterday.
The vessel was supposed to unload the illicitly-obtained shipment of oil at Zawia, after sailing there last night under Navy guard, said Colonel Rida Issa. The 21-man crew and the three Libyan prisoners – one understood to be a brother of self-styled federalist leader Ibrahim Jadhran – on board were supposed to then be taken to Tripoli.
“When I discovered that the security situation was not good in that area, I decided to take the tanker east without giving its exact destination,” Issa said. At 10pm, the tanker arrived off the coast of Tripoli where it moored until this morning.
The vessel was unable to berth either at Tripoli Port or the capital’s Naval Base, as neither could accommodate the depth of the tanker which was carrying an estimated 234,000 barrels of oil.
“Some security forces boarded the tanker at around 7am and, at 10am, we brought the prisoners to Tripoli Naval Base and handed them over the the Attorney General,” Issa said.
However, sources at the Naval Base told the Libya Herald that the handover had not gone quite as smoothly as implied by Issa.
Members of the Counter Crime Agency and ordinary police officers apparently argued about who should be responsible for taking the prisoners ashore. With members of both forces having been issued with conflicting orders about who should act as guards and who should take charge of the prisoners, the result, he said, was “total chaos.”
The whole operation was characterised by poor organisation, the source said.
Even today’s press conference to announce the successful return of the tanker and the delivery of those on board did not go smoothly. The way the media side of the handover had been handled caused outrage amongst journalists. Reuters news agency and Libyan national TV Al-Wataniya had apparently been the only two media organisations allowed access to the vessel to witness the handover. [/restrict]
